Friday afternoon, I of course, had a ferocious headache. I was feeling pretty run down, but nothing totally out of the normal for my life lately. I got out of class early and on a slightly earlier than normal train with a friend and more than thrilled to be on my way home.

Within a few minutes, I knew that something wasn’t right. I was feeling not just unwell, but unstable. When I closed my eyes, I literally began to tip over. My heart was racing. I didn’t feel anxious (in fact, oddly calm), but I felt like my heart was going to beat out of my chest. And before long I was losing my grip of consciousness. I had been tweeting about how poorly I felt, but if you look at my twitter stream from Friday afternoon, there’s a gap where I was focusing my attention on staying conscious.

I got my friend to scoot a little so that I could lay down as much as possible and I focused on breathing. I texted Slappy and told him that I would need him to pick me up because if I did manage to stay conscious, driving home was out of the question.

I made it off the train completely conscious. But I felt God-awful. I had to sit down several times while walking to meet Slappy and I just could not shake the feeling. He picked me up, I got home and laid down. I wanted to badly to avoid an emergency room trip, but after 15 minutes of lying down, my resting heart rate was over 100 bpm (normal for me is 65 at most) and I knew it wasn’t to be.

So we drove the 30 miles to Slappy’s hospital and waited. My blood pressure was a solid 30 points higher than normal and my pulse was not the 100+ it had been at home, but no where near the 60 it normally is. When I told the nurse my pain was an 8 out of 10 she looked at me like I was crazy and offered me drugs. I declined (another crazy look) and got an icepack to wait.

The decision was to draw blood, get a urine sample and do an EKG to check things out. A nurse called me back into the lab/EKG area and placed the tourniquet on my arm. Then she started rubbing up and down my arm like she was afraid of hitting a landmine. And I knew that this was not going to go well.

She couldn’t decide which vein she wanted. In fact, she couldn’t really find any at all. She didn’t ask me to pump my fist, nor really do anything at all, she just left the tourniquet on and poked and prodded. Finally she cleaned the area and stabbed. And got nothing. NOTHING. So she dug. And dug. And then quit. I told her that I needed a break because my fingers were BLUE.

So she switched arms and I swear to God, it was freaking deja vu. Only this time, she decided that she could use the needle she had carefully balanced in a vein to DRIP the blood into the vials. This worked about as well as you think it would. And while she’s dripping blood in, she comments that oh yea, even if this works, she’ll have to try again to place an IV.

And about that time, the vein collapsed. And there were 3 more vials of blood to fill.

So round 3. New stick, same shit. Same dripping technique, same collapsed vein. Only, this time, when it collapsed, I was done. I had burst into tears and when she went in for try #4, Slappy stopped her. She seemed a little offended by this, but justified it with the argument that I have rolling veins. She showed me to the bathroom for a urine sample and left. And so when I walked out of the bathroom, pee in hand, tears rolling down my cheeks, there was no one. And I had no idea where I was. I wanted to lay down and quit everything.

Someone directed me back to the lab area and the nurse sent me back to the waiting room, sans-IV. Eventually I get a room, and a new nurse takes my vitals, still elevated, and she notices that hey, I don’t have an IV. Which doesn’t matter because no one has ordered fluids anyway.

After a fair wait, a doctor comes in and asked what brought me in. His questions were short, his attention span shorter. He seemed wildly unimpressed by everything and uninspired to do anything. He decided it was my thyroid and decided that blood tests were the answer. I, barely, refrain from crying. Because apparently a 4 week old headache was totally unimportant to this doctor. I just about lost it.

Shortly after that doctor left, his attending came in. He, conversely, was totally unconcerned about the lightheadedness and initially very concerned about the headache. That said, once he did a brief neuro exam, he lost some interest. He even, whether intentionally or not, implied that it wasn’t as bad as I presented it. He, grudgingly suggested a chest x-ray (huh?), a CT scan of my head and to get the results of the blood work.

In the meantime, my nurse placed an IV on the first try (she said, and I quote “I could hit that vein with a dart.”) but had no orders for fluid, so that was great. We did the x-ray, CT scan and waited. And waited.

And then the doctor came back, told me that everything was normal and that he could offer me Tylenol 3 for the pain (the ONLY narcotic that I absolutely know makes me ill) and when I declined it, he offered no alternatives. He said I should follow up with a neurologist and that 4 weeks later was not a reasonable time frame, but ultimately, there was nothing he could do. The useless IV was removed, the bill was paid.

And then we went home.

And now, I’m here, still feeling like my head could explode at any given moment and with no explanation for anything. To say that I am frustrated would be the understatement of the century. I’m angry, tired and ready to quit everything.

Today, hell, this week, it’s been hard to be me. And it feels like it’s taking so much more energy just be upright. Today, I’m jealous of anyone who’s not in pain. Jealous of anyone who’s not praying just to have a decrease in pain because the absence of pain seems like an impossibility.

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